Budanov: Russia agreed to accept US security guarantees for Ukraine at Geneva talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov has revealed that Russia agreed to accept US security guarantees for Ukraine during the last round of peace talks in Geneva last month, Ukrainska Pravda reported on Saturday.

Speaking on Ukraine’s state-run news broadcast, Budanov said that Russian negotiators had “directly stated” their willingness to accept the guarantees proposed by the US at the latest peace talks in Geneva, which ended inconclusively on 18 February. Russia also understood that it could be “forced” to accept such guarantees, he added.

According to Budanov, Russian and Ukrainian delegations also reached an agreement on control and monitoring over a proposed demilitarised zone to be established after the end of the war. “As for the issue of territory, we are currently trying to find a compromise between two polar opposite positions,” Budanov continued.

Budanov’s remarks come amid sluggish progress in the diplomatic efforts to end hostilities in Ukraine, ahead of fresh talks planned in Abu Dhabi next week.

On Saturday Bloomberg reported that Russia was prepared to exit the peace process entirely unless Ukraine agreed to withdraw from the whole of its Donetsk region. Kyiv has maintained that a ceasefire should follow the current frontlines, citing the importance of defensive infrastructure inside the Donetsk region for Ukraine’s security.

One of the Bloomberg sources claimed that Russia was also prepared to withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, and that it would not make any further claims on territories in Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, both of which it partially occupies.

The source also indicated that Moscow would allow the United States to deploy a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, and that it would abandon its demand for a cap to the size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, though it would not accept the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine.